


Glass Beach

by starbear (panda_hiiro)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Contemporary AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:04:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21990208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_hiiro/pseuds/starbear
Summary: “You know why they call this place Glass Beach?” The stranger asks, abruptly. “I mean, obviously, it’s because of all the sea glass, right? But do you know where it comes from? My grandma told me that they’re mermaid tears. That everytime a sailor dies at sea, the mermaids cry, and their tears wash ashore here.”Shiro comes home, and finds that everything has changed. But he finds, too, that change isn't always a bad thing. Contemporary/Modern AU; written for Arms of the Ocean Shance Zine.
Relationships: Lance/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Glass Beach

_ Fort Bragg, CA _

_ January _

There’s something peaceful about a beach town in winter.

The frigid January air carries the heavy scent of sea-salt settling over the empty streets: the city is dead this time of year, off-season from the summer rush, quiet air the only thing left in the wake of hundreds of transient tourists that flood the place from May to September. 

Shiro prefers it this way. 

Near sunset, he walks down a set of rickety wooden stairs, warped and bleached by years of salt and sun, that lead to the ocean front. Not much has changed; it's been years since Shiro has been back here, back home, and he could still walk this path blindfolded. 

A handful of onlookers linger near the water, watching the sun descend on the horizon. Bits of smooth glass, rounded and worn by the ocean, litter the ground and glint a rainbow of color in the failing light. Shiro stays until the last flash of orange disappears into the sea and the purple cloak of twilight settles like a blanket over the rocky beach; he expects everyone to leave afterwards, and for the most part, they do - except one. 

He doesn’t recognize the young man: tall, lanky, with short-cropped hair and dark skin. It’s hard to take his eyes off of him as he dances around in the surf, heedless of the salt water staining his jeans and shirt, shoes knotted together and slung over his shoulder to beat an arrhythmic tempo on his back as he twists and turns in time with the waves. It’s not graceful, and borders on absurd - the water  _ has _ to be freezing, just the thought of it sends chills through Shiro - but he can't help smiling as he watches this stranger filled with reckless abandon and unabashed exuberance. Shiro might have been like that once: a long time ago, before he left, before the war. 

Caught up in introspection, Shiro almost doesn’t notice the stranger still and turn towards him, meeting his gaze and offering a small wave of his hand. Shiro blinks, startled by the gesture, and offers a half-hearted wave in return. He could walk forward, introduce himself; he  _ could _ , but instead he turns, and leaves the rolling water and the young man behind in the gathering gloom of twilight. 

* * *

Days pass before they talk. 

Most evenings, Shiro comes back to watch this stranger court the ocean - an observer only, though they both are well aware of each other’s presence, sharing the twilight shoreline with only the crashing sound of the waves. 

Shiro can’t explain what makes him stay this time, pebbles of glass clinking softly beneath his feet as he walks to the water’s edge. He’s there again, like always, standing just inside the surf, faded jeans rolled up past his ankles. Shiro stops just out of reach from the ebbing tide, and the young man turns towards him with a warm smile, like a welcome. For a while, neither of them says anything. 

“You know why they call this place Glass Beach?” The stranger asks, abruptly. “I mean, obviously, it’s because of all the sea glass, right? But do you know where it comes from? My grandma told me that they’re mermaid tears. That everytime a sailor dies at sea, the mermaids cry, and their tears wash ashore here.” 

It’s an old folktale, one Shiro heard many times growing up here. When he was small, he spent hours scanning the horizon, looking for mermaids. 

“Do you believe that?” 

“Of course not. This beach used to be a dump, and all this glass is just washed up garbage.” The stranger shrugs. “But it’s more fun to imagine it’s mermaids, don’t you think?”

Shiro picks up a piece of glass, smooth and blue and glistening where it catches the fading light. Turning it between his fingers, he thinks about the journey that brought it here, how the relentless beating of the ocean hammered and shaped this piece of broken refuse into something polished and beautiful. 

Or maybe that’s wrong, and it really is the collected tears of untold generations of mermaids gathering on the beach. He doesn’t know which story he prefers. 

“I don't know,” Shiro says, “Can't say I've ever seen a mermaid before.”

“Who's to say you're not talking to one right now?” The young man flashes a devilish grin, and extends his hand in greeting. “Name’s Lance, by the way.”

“Shiro.” There’s a brief, awkward moment when Shiro extends his left hand - quickly, Lance realizes why, and wordlessly switches hands. The handshake is brief, firm; Lance’s hand is soft in comparison to the rough, calloused texture of Shiro’s. “Nice to meet you.”

“I know who you are,” Lance says, surprising him. 

“You do?” 

“Sure. I mean, it’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone, right?” 

At one time, Shiro might have agreed with that. When he was younger, he knew everything about this town; he knew everyone. Or, at least, he thought he did. 

_ ‘I didn’t know you until now _ ,’ Shiro wants to say, wondering as he thinks it how Lance could have ever escaped his notice - even in their brief meetings, Lance makes his presence known, refuses to be ignored. 

Shiro doesn't want to ignore him. 

They settle into an unspoken routine after that, sharing the sunset together - Shiro is the last to get there, each evening, and the first to leave, just after dark. Where Lance comes from or goes, he doesn’t know, because despite an astonishing gift of gab, Lance gives very little of himself away: he still can’t figure out why he’d been familiar to Lance, or where Lance is from, or whether he lives in town or is in fact a mermaid haunting the shore. He has a family somewhere that he misses, but something keeps him from going back home - whenever Lance talks about them he looks at the ocean with some sad, distant look on his face that Shiro can’t quite decipher, and then is quick to change the conversation. Shiro can’t criticize that; he gives nothing away, either. 

But Lance  _ does _ like to talk, about everything and nothing, switching topics as easily as the sea breeze shifts directions, and for the most part Shiro is content just to listen. Lance is nothing less than sunlight wrapped up in a skin of affected charisma and bad jokes; he wears it well, even though his style of humor is terrible and his pickup lines are worse. Shiro laughs at them anyway, and in a way, it reminds him of who he used to be - wide-eyed and carefree, a boy that believed in mermaids and wild adventure, who wanted nothing more than to explore the vast unknown. That boy is long gone now, replaced by a facade of scars and silver hair that make him look years older than he is. He'll be twenty-six, next month; he feels twice that. Looks it too, he thinks, every time he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. 

It’s a wonder to him that Lance recognized him at all, changed as he is. Lance doesn’t ask, though, about what happened; it’s Shiro that eventually brings it up, though his own memory of what happened is fragmented and broken. He doesn’t really remember the crash, and only vaguely recalls waking up in a drugged haze in a hospital somewhere in North Carolina with an honorable discharge and a one-way ticket home. 

“I don’t think it really sank in until I was back here,” Shiro says. The right sleeve of his jacket hangs loose and empty, as it has for the past six months. “It’s not how I imagined coming home. But, if I’m being honest, I don’t think I ever actually thought I’d come back.” 

“For real? But you grew up here,”” Lance says. “Didn’t you miss it?”

“Not really.” 

“You didn’t like it here?” 

“It’s not that,” Shiro says, “I didn’t really feel one way or the other about it, I guess.”

“Then what made you change your mind?” 

“Didn’t have anywhere else to go, I suppose,” Shiro says.

“Hm.” Lance picks up a handful of glass pebbles and skips them into the water, watching the tiny splashes they make get lost in the tide. “What do you think you’ll do next? Stay here?” 

“I don’t know,” Shiro says, and leaves it at that. 

He  _ doesn’t _ know, that’s the truth of it - he doesn’t know  _ what _ to do, but staying here in the empty house his parents left behind, living off a disability check and settling into quiet, uneventful monotony seems unbearable. He’d thought it would feel like coming home, but instead being here again only reminds him of how different everything is: all of it just slightly off, these familiar streets changed, like him, into some new, vague facsimile of their previous selves. He carries that uncanny feeling with him as he walks, ghost-like, through town - remembering things that aren’t there anymore, startled by a new facade on the street, scanning faces in a crowd for someone that he recognizes. The times he does run into someone he once knew, there’s always this look of mingled shock and pity when they recognize him, a gentle, cautious tone in their speaking that grates on Shiro’s nerves, as if they see him as broken and don’t want to get cut on his jagged edges. It’s not like that with Lance, at least, and even that is something different, something new to get used to. 

Even the shape of the shoreline, over time, eventually changes. 

“Just promise me something?” Lance says, suddenly, “Don’t disappear again.” 

The request catches Shiro off guard, and he pauses for a moment before asking, 

“What do you mean?” 

“You know. Like before.” Lance shoves his hands into the deep pockets of his jacket, and looks out at the dark, rolling waves. Well past twilight now, the last failing embers of sunlight cast long shadows across Lance’s face, obscuring his expression. “Everyone thought you were dead.” 

“I know.” Shiro smiles, half-heartedly. “I nearly gave one of my old high school teachers a heart attack at the coffee shop the other day. She really thought I was a zombie.” 

Lance breathes a short laugh. 

“Sounds like you’ve got Halloween on lock-down this year.” Lance shakes his head. “Seriously, though. We didn’t know each other, last time. Actually, that’s just because I never worked up the nerve to talk to you, and when I thought...well, when I thought you weren’t coming back, I hated myself for that. Like, I should’ve just done it, you know? That’s why, when I saw you here at the beach that night, I told myself I wouldn’t make that mistake again.” 

“And now we do know each other,” Shiro says, not without a certain amount of fondness.

“Yep,” Lance says, “So it’d doubly suck if you were gone again.” 

Something else lies in between Lance’s words, something Shiro can’t face straight on - Lance wants him to stay. Shiro has never been very good at that. 

“I’ll try,” Shiro says.

“That’s not a promise.” 

“No,” Shiro says. “It’s not.” 

“Why?” 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, meaning it, “I just don’t want to make a promise to you if I don’t know for sure I can keep it.” 

“Oh.” Disappointment hangs, palpable, in Lance’s voice. “Okay.” 

A heavy, uncomfortable silence settles over them in the gathering gloom, and suddenly, Shiro is keenly aware of the distance between him and Lance. Like a satellite in orbit, always no more than an arm’s length away - all it would take is a slight tip in gravity to send them crashing into one another. Part of him wants that, badly, to give into the tidal force pulling them together. It might not be so bad, to want, and be wanted. He could allow himself that. 

But he’d surrendered to gravity once before, and had been met only with wrenching metal and unforgiving ground; he doesn’t know if his heart can survive this different sort of crash. 

“It’s getting late,” Shiro says, knowing as he says it how banal it sounds, “We should probably get going.” 

“Sure,” Lance says, without moving.

He’s still standing there when Shiro leaves, a stark figure against the dark, his back towards the shore as he looks out over the black ocean. 

* * *

Lance isn’t there the next day.

Or the day after, and his absence, though unsurprising, weighs like a stone on Shiro’s heart. At least it makes what he needs to do next easier. 

Alone, Shiro picks up a piece of glass from the beach - he holds it tightly in his hand, as if he could memorize the outline of it that way, then throws it, as far as he can, the splash of it hitting the water lost somewhere in the motion of the waves. 

And just like that, a little piece of the shoreline changes. 

* * *

_ March _

Despite the afternoon sun, it’s still cold on the beach - spring is a couple of weeks away yet, but there’s a promise of it in the air, a whisper of coming change. Soon enough this place will be crowded with tourists, but for now Shiro watches the handful of people that come and go: families with small children, lovers strolling hand in hand, a young boy playfully chasing after a large dog bounding through the surf. 

And, as the afternoon wears on, Lance. 

In the back of his mind, Shiro almost expected to see Lance rise up out of the waves like some resplendent sea creature; instead he trots down the worn wooden stairs, just like anyone, barefoot with his shoes knotted together and swinging from his hand. It hasn’t even been a month since Shiro last saw him, and still a sudden swell of yearning rises in his chest, as if they’d been separated by years instead of weeks. Shiro just watches him for a moment, his voice caught somewhere in his throat, before he finally manages to call out. 

“Lance.” Shiro smiles, and offers a meek wave. “Hi.” 

“Shiro?” Lance’s eyes widen, his mouth open in a little ‘o’ shape of surprise. He stands there frozen for a moment before his brain and body seem to get back in sync with each other, at which point he flings his sneakers, angrily, at Shiro. “‘Hi?!’ What do you mean, ‘hi?!’ Where the heck have you been?! D’you know I thought you’d died or something,  _ again _ , and then you show up here out of the blue and all you’ve got to say is, ‘hi?’” 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. 

“‘Sorry’ is better, but you’re gonna have to do a lot more than that, buddy. I  _ told _ you not to disappear again, and then what do you do? No one had any idea where you were, and I felt like a total creeper asking around about you, and...and what the heck is  _ that _ ?” 

Lance trails off, abruptly, pointing at the matte metal of Shiro’s new right hand. Shiro flexes his fingers with a small, whirring mechanical sound. 

“Experimental prosthetic,” Shiro explains. “It’s part of a clinical trial. I had to be gone for a while to make sure it worked alright.”

“Woah.” Lance blinks, and stares at the prosthetic. Shiro extends his hand, and Lance takes it in his own, wondering over the smooth metal form. “That’s pretty sweet. So are you like, a Terminator now?” 

“Terminator? Really?” 

“Hey, come on,” Lance says, “If you’re gonna have a robot arm, you might as well make the most of it, right?” 

“Point,” Shiro says. “Anyway, I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I didn’t mean to disappear, but...I realized I didn’t have a way to tell you I was leaving. You stopped coming to the beach.” 

“Hey, don’t try to put this on me!” Lance looks at the ground, and scuffs his foot along the rocks. “But, yeah, you’re right, I did, for a little while. Sorry.” 

“You don’t have to apologize,” Shiro says. “I should have given you a better answer when you asked me to stay.” 

Lance looks up at that, a hint of something hopeful in his voice. 

“Did you change your mind about that?” 

“Maybe,” Shiro says. “I’m still working it out. It helps that I had someone I wanted to come back to, though.” 

“Must be a lucky person.” 

“I’m talking about you, you know.” 

“I know.” Lance grins, then bends down to pick something up off the rocky ground. He takes Shiro’s left hand in his own and presses something small and hard and cool into his palm; Shiro opens his hand and finds a smooth piece of glass, cerulean and translucent. “Mermaid tears, remember? Think of it as the one I cried when I thought you weren’t coming back.” 

“I thought you weren’t supposed to take glass off the beach,” Shiro says.

“Don’t ruin my romantic gesture,” Lance says, smacking his shoulder. 

“Sorry. Thank you.” Shiro closes his hand around the comfortable weight of the small stone, and slips it in his pocket - it lies there as tangible proof of the changing shoreline, of the continual evolution of the world around him. And, maybe, of the way he’s changing as well. “That answers a question I had, though.” 

“Huh? What’s that?” 

“Why you knew me when I couldn’t remember you,” Shiro says. “I’d been trying to figure it out since we met. You weren’t lying about the mermaid thing, were you?” 

“Depends on which story you prefer. There's the one where I made a wish to the sea goddess or something to trade in my mermaid tail for legs so I could find true love,” Lance says, “Or there's the one where my gay awakening hit freshman year of high school when I realized I had a crush on the most popular dude in school. Take your pick.”

After a moment’s deliberation, Shiro offers his hand to Lance and says, 

“I like the one where we end up together.”

“Yeah,” Lance says, as their fingers intertwine, “I like that one, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for the Arms of the Ocean Shance zine, a project that I am honored to have been a part of! With the ocean theme in mind, my first thought was how much I love going to the beach in the off-season: the quiet of standing on an empty shore, breathing in the cold salt air, watching the gray waves roll in. That was the image I had in mind when I started working on this. 
> 
> Glass Beach is a real place, of course. I haven't actually been there, but when I first heard of it I knew I wanted to write a story set there. The mermaid legend is also a real thing (though whether Lance is a mermaid or not, I will leave to you to decide)! 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
